I watch the ice melt on the glass while the eloquent young pilgrims pass and leave behind

a trail imploring us all not to fail.

Of course I was raised to gather courage from those lofty tales so tried and true.

Good morning and welcome to episode 631 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from baseball

Prospectus presented by the play index at baseballreference.com.

I'm Ben Lindbergh of Grantland, joined as always by Sam Miller of baseball Prospectus.

Hello.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough.

Yes, now I know it's you.

And today is our Cubs team preview podcast.

Normally we would have the BP Annual essay author on in the first segment, but the author

of the Cubs BP Annual essay is Sahadav Sharma, who is hosting our second segment.

He'll be talking to Bruce Miles, the Cubs Beat Writer for the Daily Herald.

Because Cubs Prospects are such a source of interest, we want to focus on them in this

first segment and let's talk about the Big League Club in the second segment with Bruce.

And we're kind of in a quandary because we had Sahadav on last summer to talk about the

Cubs.

And podcasts about four months or so ago to talk about Cubs prospects.

Cubs prospects haven't done a whole lot since then, but we're going to talk about Cubs

prospects today with a new prospect writer or new to this podcast.

Chris Crawford, who is the new senior prospect writer for baseball Prospectus, formerly of ESPN

Insider.

...